The Buffalo Hunter Hunter – Stephen Graham Jones
Coming off “Lonesome Dove,” which used the Indigenous people of the American West mostly as set dressing, “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter” serves as a necessary correction. Stephen Graham Jones takes the same frontier backdrop — the nascent days of Montana — and gives the narrative back to those who were written out of it.
The novel opens with a discovery: a Lutheran pastor’s diary sealed inside a wall, detailing a string of mysterious skinnings in 1912. Through those pages we meet Good Stab, a Blackfeet man who has lived far beyond his years and carries both the grief and vengeance of his people.
Bitten by a strange, caged “Cat Man” during a U.S. military ambush decades earlier, Good Stab becomes something between man and monster — a vampire whose bloodlust mirrors the settlers’ appetite for buffalo and land. It’s a clever inversion as the Indigenous hunter turned immortal predator, now hunts those draining his world of resources.
Jones builds this as a frontier “Interview with the Vampire,” but filtered through the oral tradition and survival instincts of the Plains. The vampire lore feels organic — sunlight doesn’t kill but hardens the skin, tobacco smoke paralyzes and the blood you drink changes your appearance to resemble its source.
But Good Stab retains a fair amount of humanity, just like Louis de Pointe du Lac. He still prays over the animals he kills, dismantles trappers’ snares and directs his thirst toward men who treat the land like something to be conquered. His story is violent and sad, but rooted in reverence and revenge, which becomes clearer as details of the Marias Massacre become known.
Where “Lonesome Dove” sprawls with charm and myth, “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter” compresses that same landscape into something haunted. Jones writes with tension, though he does overindulge, especially in the epistolary sections written by Arthur, the pastor and confessor.
While his diary entries feel authentic to the era, they also stall the momentum and make you long to return to Good Stab’s voice. Arthur’s curiosity slowly curdles into paranoia once he realizes his subject might be out for more than simple absolution.
A century later, Arthur’s descendant, Etsy Beaucarne, is given the pages of his diary and sees a career-making opportunity. Her sections ground the novel in the modern academic world, but she’s still trading in Indigenous trauma for personal advancement — an irony lost on her until the end.
When Good Stab reappears in Etsy’s apartment in the present day, the novel becomes a final reckoning, both personal and cultural. The audiobook captures this turn beautifully, with Marin Ireland unraveling Etsy’s composure, Shane Ghostkeeper giving Good Stab a mournful steadiness and Owen Teale’s voice lending Arthur just the right amount of arrogance and awe.
The story meanders in the middle, and I could’ve used more from Good Stab’s battle with the Cat Man. Jones never quite explains the rules of vampirism in this world, but in hindsight, I guess he didn’t need to. The final chapters still land with the perfect mixture of gory imagery, poetic writing and surprisingly emotional closure.
Like “Prey” did for “Predator,” this novel takes a familiar horror archetype and reframes it into something more realistic. Beneath the blood and folklore is a story about cultural erasure, guilt and what it means to survive when survival itself becomes monstrous. Jones can overwrite, sure, but even his excesses feel born from the same impulse that drives Good Stab: the need to tell a story no one else would.
Thanks to Libro.fm, Simon & Schuster Audio, and the author for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.
Rating (story): 4/5 stars
Rating (narration): 4/5 stars
Format: Audiobook (personal library)
Dates read: October 3 – October 7, 2025
Multi-tasking: Not recommended. These are dense chapters that span time and characters, and it’s easy to gloss over aspects of the story if you aren’t paying close attention.
